hahahaha statement and a half! God!
Keep it going JC
love the fact hes so down to earth n comes n chats with us here, sort of like being able to go to the pub with david beckham. what a guy! what a team!

As much as I would love to see Armadillo win, I don't think it's likely. On the other hand, if everything went right (for a change), they switch over to X-Prize vehicle work only and all start working solely at Armadillo, they just might be able to take the prize.

That would certainly be something very cool to be telling your kids about.

As much as I would love to see Armadillo win, I don't think it's likely. On the other hand, if everything went right (for a change), they switch over to X-Prize vehicle work only and all start working solely at Armadillo, they just might be able to take the prize.

That would certainly be something very cool to be telling your kids about.

Wouldn't that be.... <gasp>

NEWSWORTHY?

Note to John Carmack: I seriously hope y'all actually get a crack at this competition, and I think a three-way space race would be absolutely awesome <***KOFF***hopes***KOFF***>.

I think Armadillo will win the X-Prize, because John Carmack can do anything

Sorry, but no, they won't. Even if Carmack switched over to Armadillo full time the only possible way they could win would be if both Scaled and Da Vinci failed in their attempts, and while I'm not too confident about Da Vinci, Scaled looks very solid. Even JC himself said that Armadillo doesn't have much of a snowball's chance of winning.

Look, I love Armadillo's updates and am not a troll. But we need to be realistic here and not overhype anything, or at least not overhype things too much. Remember how many people hailed Rotary Rocket and Beal Aerospace and Kistler and Pioneer Rocketplane as the wave of innovation that would put private industry in space? I'm not superstitious, but I know that jinxing can be a very bad thing.

And what's with the Doom 3 remark? The lighting is awesome, as is pretty much the whole game. And even if you don't like the whole blowing up zombies part of it, you can just play Super Turbo Turkey Puncher for hours on end!

_________________"Yes, that series of words I just said made perfect sense!"
-Professor Hubert Farnsworth

I think Armadillo will win the X-Prize, because John Carmack can do anything

I doubt it. Even if Scaled and da Vinci both fail, JC himself has said he isn't optimistic about being able to make an X-Prize launch by the end of the year (after which most of the prize funding disappears, as I understand).

I just hope that Armadillo will stay active even without the X-Prize incentive. I do think that Armadillo has by far the best chance at running a profitable space tourism business.

Armadillo might loose this battle but they could very well win the war, so to speak. Their vehicle can have a quick servicing time, doesn't need much ground support, uses cheap fuel, will be exhaustively tested, doesn't use the mother of all balloons, and can concevably be the beginning of a program that goes orbital.

If I thought about it in terms of a burgeoning industry and not from simply the Xprize, or Xprize cup, I think it's very likely that Armadillo will win.

If Lockheed and Boeing are the Sperry and IBM of space, then Scaled is the "DEC" of space. Ergo Carmack=a Suborbital Steve Jobs. Ugggh did I say that?

But I think we have to make a difference between those who already have been speaking of the orbit in the public and those who have not.

Interorbital has the orbit in mind since they are doing business - the XPRIZE hasn't been of essential meaning for them never. Scaled is speaking of the orbit since 21th of June and Armadillo didN#t speak of the orbit in the public yet - perhaps they never will plan to go to orbit.

If Scaled is to be compared to DEC then to whom is Interorbital to be compared to from your point of view? And is there anyone like Aplle or Sun?

oh the analogies are going to get thick. Much as I hate to say it, Interorbital would probably have ten-thousand analogies in many industries. Good ideas by an organization too small and with no means of getting the funding to make it happen. I hope I am proved wrong, of course, but I think the days are here where there is going to be a huge distinction betwen "Private" and "Amateur". It wasn't such an easy line back during the Cats Prize or even before. CSXT, for all it's done, is amateur (and I am not using that term in a derogatory sense at all), whereas JP Aerospace is now, well there not even Private with the amount of government work they are getting. Interorbital, I don't know if they are beyond amateur yet.

The Civilian Space Exploration Team has launched a very small unmanned suborbital vehicle only and is explicitly a team of hobbyists, students, scholars etc. - they don't have ambitions and goals like the XPRIZE competitors. But Interorbital has a goal beyond the goals of most of the other XPRIZE-teams. So under this aspect they are no amateurs - and don't forget: They have constructed a spaceport in texas and they worked in Scaled's ballon-project (according to what they published at their website). So we should take Interorbital in serious and not as amateurs but ask after their chances. They are pioneers - they might have found ways we don't know and never would detect.

But to turn to your comparison - who might become the equivalent to Microsoft?